And Then There Were None: Wargrave's Triumph
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: Judge John Lawrence Wargrave always wanted to commit a great murder, and not just ONE murder, but a mass murder.
1. Chapter 1

I don't own And then there were None by Agatha Christie, I just own this story.

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

And Then There Were None.

Wargrave's Triumph.

The den of Judge Lawrence John Wargrave was certainly a sight to behold as it was a contradiction to anybody who came to visit the judge and spent more time studying the room rather than just giving it a cursory glance.

Dotting the walls were pictures, portraits and photographs and sketches of members of people who any passing visitor would correctly assume were members of the judge's family, but there were pictures of houses, ships, trains, there was even one of the Battle of Waterloo and a few old naval maps showing faraway places, while scattered around the room were model train-sets, a huge global model of the Earth, among other things. Dominating a narrow space in an alcove was a massive dark wooden bookcase with the shelves crammed full of books.

That was what most people would consider being normal.

But there were other pictures framed on the walls. Judge Lawrence Wargrave was well known as a "hanging judge." Displayed like the trophies displayed by a Big Game hunter coming home from a long safari in Africa or India or in South America were dark-framed newspaper articles that had been cut out from the papers and placed in picture frames before they were mounted with pride on the walls. These framed newspaper cutouts detailed his entire career, from his earliest cases to the times he had succeeded in getting people hung. And like a big game hunter who displayed the largest and the most memorable trophies as centrepieces, Judge Wargrave had the most famous executions framed in silver art-deco frames to stand them out.

Edward Seton was among them.

At this point in time, the frame stood out differently from the others on the wall, as the frame was done up in gold and copper as well as silver against the dark, rich walls.

The walls were painted a rich red in colour.

Blood red.

Scattered around the room were other newspaper articles and pictures that were framed, depicting other executions, and there were torture implements and even an old noose mounted on the wall.

Wargrave lifted his glass of brandy and he took a generous gulp, smacking his lips as the alcohol trickled down his throat while he studied the newly framed newspaper article about Seton. He had even framed a few of the articles criticising what he had done, the articles were being written by people who believed Seton was innocent, though in truth the evidence against him had been considered so terrible it simply could not have been made public.

Poppycock in Wargrave's opinion, mentally sneering at the way the police and those who wanted to mollycoddle the masses behaved.

He had personally wanted the public scared at what Seaton had done.

Wargrave let a smirk cross his craggy head while his eyes shrewdly scanned the newspaper articles surrounding Seaton while he thought about the way he had become fascinated with Seton's work.

The judge had always been fascinated with death. He had always had a savage bloodlust even as a child. He had written small stories of it, of intricately plotted murders, and they became his bread and butter until he had satisfied both the bloodlust and his strong sense of justice by becoming a judge.

It was those stories which had inspired him to become a judge since he had worked out he didn't have the patience to become a detective or any other kind of police officer. At the same time, if he wanted to fulfil his desire to see death then he would need to see it performed differently to what he had written as a child. Childish stuff if he read through the stories now considering he had spent so long in the judicial business.

Wargrave had considered simply going out there into the world and becoming a serial killer. He had decided against it after he had read the Sherlock Holmes story _The Final Problem _where the monologue Holmes himself had stated clearly the reasons for Professor Moriarty's success as a criminal genius stemmed from the fact the professor himself _had not committed any of the crimes he had planned to the last letter. _

Indeed as he had grown older, he had come to realise for himself that if he was to commit murders of his own he would need to plan them out carefully and have somebody else do the deed for him.

In any case, he had decided against becoming a serial killer, as he had found it would be very difficult to do with his sense of justice, especially since the judicial service was right there waiting for him. The judicial service had a ready-made position that would do just that, and with the laws of the country allowing for capital punishment of that level, it would be easy for him to don the robes of a judge and pass on the judgement.

And it worked. His years of study had certainly been rewarding. He had personally overseen the executions of all of his victims, and he had enjoyed each one of them.

Yes, at moments Wargrave had considered once or twice picking up some kind of knife and going out and killing people whom other judges had foolishly let off to satisfy his bloodlust which had become savage as time went on and felt becoming some kind of vigilante who went out to slaughter those who justice had missed would satisfy it. He hadn't because he had enough pleasure as it was.

But he had decided against it. He had enough thrills watching the people whom he had sentenced swing from the noose. But none of them had been as….marvellous as Edward Seton.

Seton had shown he was an inferno compared to the mundane sparks of his previous hangings.

Seton had shown a warped mind, but the way he had conducted his murders had been nothing short of genius. He had written diaries, of which Wargrave had read prior to presiding over the trial. Where others were horrified by what Seton had done, Wargrave was _fascinated _and he had needed to mask the pleasure he had just in reading them since Seton was a kindred spirit and the judge had sensed that as soon as he had begun to read them. The diaries harked back to his childhood short stories of committing murders, only these diary entries were different. The entries were real. They were happening.

When he had gone to visit Seton just as the executioner was slipping the noose around the man's neck, an understanding had passed between the pair of them. Seton was not stupid. He had wanted his murders to live on, a legacy of horror. And one look into Judge John Lawrence Wargrave's eyes showed Seton it had worked, and that the judge was much like himself.

Seton had swung with a smile around his neck, but Wargrave had gone away feeling both satisfied and determined to carry out his own murders. He knew he would need to be fast. Wargrave had recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and it was extremely painful. Call it an act of God for everything he had done, Wargrave neither knew nor cared. He had never really believed in God, he had always believed in the image of life and death - the image of someone moving one moment and then the next where they were no longer moving. What a powerful image that was.

But Wargrave had a plan.

The judge had always been fascinated with a childish but powerful poem which spoke about death as though it were a lover. Ten Little Soldier Boys… The characters in the poem itself died in a specific way instead of using some mundane, ordinary method. So why couldn't he replicate that for real? The answer was he could, and he intended to.

Ten Little Soldier Boys…

Ten people, all of whom had been missed by justice in the past.

Well, why should he not take justice into his own hands? Vigilantes did it all the time. But he was going to do it for real.

So he had a means of committing murder, but who was he going to murder? The judge smiled as he took another gulp of his brandy, thinking about what he could do, who he could murder.

Wargrave knew it would take him time. He would need to pay attention to rumours and maybe even bribe a few people here and there to give him names of people who would definitely deserve to die. At the same time, Wargrave would need to think about where he would murder them so then he wouldn't need to travel; with his illness, he had no idea of knowing what would happen, and if he was going to commit murders he would want them committed in a place where he had total control. It would not do at all if his targets were going to leave the next morning, after all...

Wargrave downed the rest of the brandy as he continued to think about his plan.


	2. Chapter 2

And then there were None is not mine.

Feedback would be nice. I've based this particular chapter on the TV adaptation the BBC produced a few years back. I enjoyed the last-minute talk between Justice Wargrave and Vera Claythorne, so I borrowed it for this chapter.

At the same time, I omitted the part of the book where Wargrave had written an account of what he had done. I felt that if he wanted a mystery to endure for a long time, the last thing he'd do would be to reveal how it was all done since the mystery would live forever.

* * *

Wargrave's Triumph.

As he finally finished tidying up the dining room after making the final preparations in Miss Claythorne's room, Judge Wargrave's had time to think while he peered out through the windows while he waited for Vera to return from the beach after she had shot Lombard in the chest, believing he was the killer.

Once Blore was killed and he had removed the final figure from the table, he had heard Miss Claythorne and Lombard get out of the house though he had tracked their journey out of the house to the beach where they would try to summon help from the mainland, but Blore's death would put paid to that plan. He had watched them from the window and he had left the house cautiously when he had seen them head down to the beach, knowing it wouldn't be long before they found Armstrong's corpse.

Wargrave had found a good enough vantage point where he couldn't be seen but he would have a masterful view of the beach beneath him, while at the same time even someone as observant as Phillip Lombard wouldn't even notice him, although the mercenary would know the danger was far from over.

From the vantage point Wargrave had watched as Lombard and Claythorne - they were two of a kind, those two. He had noticed it as soon as he had first met the pair; both of them were calm, rational, both of them were observant and cunning. And yet Vera Claythorne had disappointed him the most; he had assumed they would have come up with a plan to flush him out, or something like that.

It wouldn't have been beyond them to come up with a scheme knowing if they did such a thing they could discover who was really doing the killings on Soldier Island and find a way to stop him.

That Wargrave could not allow, and although he wanted to perform the killings he was performing in the name of true justice against the people whom the group he had summoned here as close to the poem as he could, Wargrave was not foolish enough to rely on the poem to ensure his plan went the way he wanted this whole business to go through.

While he had been making contingency plans when he had seen Lombard and Claythorne on the beach together, he was gratified to see Claythorne snatch the revolver from Lombard's back and accuse him of being the murderer. That was what had disappointed him; he had assumed Vera Claythorne was more controlled than that.

But it didn't affect his plans that much, although the reason why she cried out as she had on the beach before she collapsed had mystified him; the important thing was Lombard was dead, and that left Claythorne left to deal with.

With that in mind, Wargrave had walked back to the house and cleaned up the mess made from the loud and noisy party thrown last night, and he set the scene ready for the final step of the grand plan he had spent a long time arranging.

While he waited for the former governess to return from the beach, he could already see her once neat and white blouse and signature blue skirt in the distance, both of which had become worn and dirty in the last two days or so as one murder after another mounted suspicion on the island, Wargrave had time to think.

It was nearly over. For so long, his grand plan to commit the perfect murder while giving it a mystery which was so unfathomable to solve no matter how often you tried to look at it, had been in the making. As he watched Vera walk towards the house slowly - he didn't know what she was thinking, and truthfully he didn't care, though he was prepared to find a way of physically knocking her senseless if he needed to, and shove her neck in the noose he had prepared for her upstairs to get it over with, though he wasn't sure if that was even necessary - Wargrave had a moment to reflect on his plan and the things he had needed to do in order to carry it out.

The easiest part had been finding the right lawyer who would do the work for him. Issac Morris was an unethical man, but he had liked money, and as long as he was paid, he would have done anything. He would probably have even sold his own mother for a small fortune. Finding Morris had been the easiest part of Wargrave's plans, though he had already decided to use the man. Morris was known to the authorities already, but he had done nothing to warrant an arrest, and besides that, the man was greedy for cash. A few bribes here and there under the 'U.N Owen' persona….Getting him wasn't difficult.

Likewise, it hadn't been difficult to compile a list of people who he felt deserved to die. That was the thing about people, really, those who commit murders; they always make the mistake of believing their activities had gone unnoticed.

How wrong they were.

Granted, it took him slightly longer than it had to find someone like Morris, but that was the beauty of his plans. Wargrave knew the value of patience, and in any case, while his tumour was spreading and extremely painful to cope with, he felt he had enough strength to wait.

He had begun hearing rumours about people, on top of investigating his own judicial brethren while some like Dr Armstrong came to him by chance after he had found his way into a nursing home to convalesce. One of the sisters recounted the story of the dangers of drink by telling him about Armstrong, a London doctor who had performed surgery under the influence. In the same vein, he had listened and overheard military gossips recount the story of General MacArthur, while an indignant and unimportant individual told him about Emily Brent and her own sins.

Blore and Marston were easy; he had listened to his own colleagues. In Blore's case, he had simply listened to the details of the Landor case. He had been looking for a member of the law who were not integral, so he had found his way onto the list. Likewise, he had looked for someone like Marston, who was one of the more amoral members of society.

Vera Claythorne - ah, she was close to the house now - he had to listen to Hugo Hamilton recount the story of young Cyril, and his suspicions about what Vera had done, and once Wargrave was certain, he had added her to the list. Wargrave had selected her with the final verse of the poem in mind.

"One little soldier boy left all alone, he went and hanged himself. And then there were None."

She was perfect for the hanging part of the poem.

There was something…off, he thought as she walked back to the house slowly, any plans or thoughts of escape long gone. He knew Claythorne and Lombard had both planned with Blore to escape, though that plan had been put paid to with the death of Blore, and the discovery of Armstrong's body, though the death of Lombard was a bonus.

But what was wrong with her?

She seemed to be in a ….daze.

Wargrave heard her come into the house, and he watched from his hiding place as she walked up the stairs. He followed her up slowly and saw her drop the revolver on the ground.

From the weird daze she was in and the strange way she held out her hand as though she had been holding a small persons' s hand - a child's hand, Wargrave wondered if she was suffering from a psychotic hallucination, but he didn't care. He watched and waited as she turned and gave a big smile to someone whom only she could see, and she turned and walked into her room and closed the door.

Wargrave followed her, his mind racing. He wondered whether she had seen the noose yet. He wondered if she would come to her senses at the sight of the noose, remembering what Hugo had said to her about if he had the evidence she was behind Cyril Hamilton's death then she would hang and he would gladly see it, but when he heard nothing from the other side of the door.

There was no sign of any screaming, no hint of crying…

Wargrave reached for the doorknob and began to twist it to open the door. As he did, he heard Vera Claythorne's voice whisper, "Hugo?"

On his side of the door, Wargrave grimaced as the stiffness of the knob, mentally thanking the Lord his days on this Earth were over - he hated it when he had to deal with doorknobs which were so beastly stiff…

Ah! At last!

He had finally managed to get the knob to work.

"Hugo?" he heard Claythorne whisper again, her voice a little more rational than before.

Wargrave opened the door wider and stepped inside, taking in the sight of Vera Claythorne standing on a chair with the noose around her neck, her clothes were clearly damp and making her pale, tired face even gaunter. He watched with an inner smile as she finally snapped out of the daze she had been in since she had made her way back from the beach and realised where she was. His smile grew when, in her struggle to escape the noose, she accidentally knocked the chair down, and she was left standing on the edge of the seat. Wargrave's inner smile, already wide in sadistic glee at the sight, widened into a grin when he heard the noose tighten around her neck and she was left choking.

"'Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun,"' Wargrave said conversationally as he crossed the room, ignoring the sound of Claythorne's choking as he headed over to the vanity table in the room, "'one got frizzled up, and then there was one,"" he glanced up at the choking woman for a moment before he sat down, still quoting from the poem which had been the basis for his plan, "'One little soldier boy left all alone, he went and hanged himself,"' as he spoke he placed the two figurines on the table and stared at them, smirking that it was almost over, "'and then there were none."'

Wargrave glanced at Claythorne and gave her his full attention while she struggled to remain on the chair. "You're wondering about the," he lifted a hand to the back of his head and made a snorting sound to simulate the blast of a gun, and he chuckled with the cleverness of the plan.

"Liver and kidneys. You all believed the doctor when he said I was dead, but none of you had checked," he said while Claythorne's hands clawed the noose.

"I need to get down," she managed to say, but he ignored her; she had more than enough time to listen to him.

"Armstrong made it so much easier," he said to give her the impression he was ignoring her, "he was very keen to forge an alliance. I don't know what he thought was going to happen when he went out into the night to meet me. Perhaps that I was going to save him," he glanced up at Claythorne, his mind going over the meeting he'd had with the _Good _doctor.

Armstrong's problem was he was not good at looking at things rationally even in times of stress, which was probably one of the reasons barring the last war why he had turned to drink, which led to the murder he committed while he'd worked as a surgeon.

Ignoring the sound of Claythorne choking as the noose tightened around her throat while she struggled to find a way of getting free without accidentally knocking the upturned chair away from her, Wargrave went on, "I lied about the success of my surgery. The mass, the tumour," he shook his head, "it's spreading. There's nothing to be done but await the inevitable."

As if on cue, as if the tumour was sentient and wanted to remind its victim of its presence, it delivered a strong surge of pain. Wargrave managed to stave off the general reaction, but he was unable to hide the grimace at the sensation.

"It's _quite extraordinarily _painful," he hissed out before he managed to push the pain aside, "still not long now though."

"Why are you doing this?" Claythorne managed to get out.

Wargrave chuckled in his throat. He had wondered when she would ask that question. Vera Claythorne, from what he had learnt and seen for herself, had a rational, deductive mind. She had quickly worked out the pattern of the deaths and asked some very good questions even if she had made a big mistake over time in killing Lombard.

"Because justice comes to all," he said, looking up at her as she continued to struggle, "I told you that, were you not listening?"

Even as he asked that Wargrave became aware that in truth _none _of his victims had been asking the right questions, nor had they listened to anything anyone had to say.

"The evidence that led me to convict Edward Seton was considered too terrible to made public," he went on, not bothering to go into how much contempt he had for the decision, the need to mollycoddle the public, "It was the stuff of nightmares. Really. And where others were revolted.." Wargrave had to pause as the memory of the _sheer delight _he'd had just reading the first paragraph of the diaries he'd read over in order to make the decision to have Seton hanged easier to make. How could he make it easier for Claythorne just to _realise _the epiphany he'd had when he had read through the diaries.

It didn't take Wargrave longer than a few seconds to realise there was no way he could find the right words to describe it. Claythorne would not understand, and in any case, he wanted to complete his grand plan now.

"_Oh, _Miss Claythorne I was _fascinated," _Wargrave said at last, deciding that was the best approach, just to describe how he had felt at the time while he saw Vera was -literally- hanging onto every word, "and when Seton looked into my eyes, he could see I was _thrilled."_

Wargrave paused as the memory of him visiting Seton during the execution filled his mind. He remembered lifting his head underneath his hat and meeting Seton's face. Seton had been surprised, but only for a brief second before a large smile split his face, the last expression he had on his face before his neck snapped.

"He knew I was a kindred spirit, and when his neck snapped it I felt I had been handed a gift."

"No, no," Claythorne got out desperately while she tried to get free of the noose, "you don't mean any of this. You are a good man. Moral."

"Moral?" Wargrave repeated, smiling at her mockingly, though he gave it some thought. "Maybe there's something in that," he agreed with a shrug, "there are differences between Seton and myself. All his victims were innocent. You were all guilty."

Wargrave let that sink into Vera's head to let them know that was what this whole business was about.

Justice.

He had not gone through to all of this trouble to get ten people, ten unsuspecting people, to come to an island where they would not realise they were trapped, and create that gramophone disc to make the house seem like a giant comfortable courtroom for some stupid cause. Yes, he had done it to commit murder but he also because he wanted to satisfy his desire to commit murder.

They had been judged. He had merely carried out his sentence.

"Now imagine," he went on, "the detectives arrive to discover a house full of slaughter and the handiwork of U.N Owen everywhere."

Wargrave took a moment to clear his throat in order to hide the grimace of pain he felt. The tumour was getting on his nerves. He reassured himself it would not be long now.

"But U.N Owen himself is nowhere to be seen, but who else could have fired the final shot that ended the life of the _unimpeachable _judge? Ten bodies, no murderer. How could have disappeared? So unfathomable. They'll be worrying about it for years," Wargrave smiled at the genius of his scheme.

That was where murderers went wrong, really; they made it incredibly simple for the law to discover them. His scheme took care of that because with him dead no-one would know the truth, and everyone on the island being dead would only make everyone who tried to explain the mystery would find it impossible.

"No, no wait," Claythorne got out, "there's no more bullets. There can be no final shot because the gun is empty. There's no more bullets!"

Wargrave put on a pretend, long-suffering sigh of disappointment when he was inwardly dancing a jig. He had been wondering to himself whether or not Claythorne would come up with an excuse like this, though he already had the bullet in his pocket. "Damn. It's all spoilt," he said instead, pretending to look thoughtful as he tried to think of a way out of this.

"No, it's not spoilt."

"Yes it is," he went on, disappointed that like Dr Armstrong and Blore this woman who had a good brain in her head was able to forget something as obvious as this. "There are corpses everywhere and only me left."

"Not just you," Claythorne smiled, it looked ghastly on her pale, pasty face. "There's me. Two of us, together. We'll say it was Phillip, that he was mad."

Wargrave chuckled. "He was quite the sanest of the lot, I thought," he replied, looking at her thoughtfully as he listened to what she was saying, although he was in truth disappointed with her.

Out of the ten he had selected for his plan, only Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard had the intellects to discover what was going on. Claythorne had worked out that he was using the poem to base the murders on sequentially and she had been the first to recognise whoever was behind the murders was taking away the figures from the table.

In the meantime Lombard had worked out all of the people on the island were being hunted down, one at a time, and where Blore, who was a trained police officer, had cast suspicion on Rogers or even Armstrong until he realised too late he was wrong, Lombard had scoffed and said it was not him since the mercenary had already worked out a lot of time and money was spent on preparing the island for this in the first place.

All the others….

Marston had been the first to die, but in the brief time he had known the young man, Wargrave had known from the off Marston would have not understood the danger he was in. Ethel Rogers had been a nervous wreck, frightened out of her wits and guilt-ridden over what she had done, though she hadn't stopped her husband, and the General had worked out nothing could be done, though it would have been interesting to see what he would have thought.

Miss Brent was nothing more than a religious zealot who enjoyed spouting her observations and her views to everyone. Rogers was just nothing more than an abusive thug who enjoyed going after people whom he knew could not fight back, and no-one was aware of his true thoughts about the murders though it was academic now.

Armstrong was nothing more than a drunk who buckled under pressure and let his mouth do the thinking, and Blore was a pretender who believed he was a policeman but was nothing more than a pathetic amateur in detection.

In contrast, both Claythorne and Lombard were both cool, efficient people. Both of whom thought about puzzles at different angles and went about them head-on.

But Lombard was a hunter, honed and refined by years and years of fighting. He wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty. Wargrave had only been slightly worried Lombard would be the one to discover the truth, with Claythorne's help since the woman was no slouch when it came to deductive reasoning.

And yet…

In truth, Wargrave had no idea what had made her kill Lombard, though he was grateful because the younger man was a threat, he was annoyed by her lack of intellect.

Oh well.

"He was insane. He killed us all, and I shot him," Claythorne visibly made an effort to get some air into her constricted airways. "I shot him to defend us. It was all Phillip Lombard."

"You took him as your lover," Wargrave observed.

"Yes.

"You've got his blood on your feet," he said, spotting the splatter on Vera's foot.

"Self defence," Claythorne replied quickly. She had an answer for everything. "We'll say that. We'll say that" she repeated quietly as if she was driving it home into Wargrave's head. "They'll believe us. They believed me last time."

Claythorne gasped and Wargrave saw that she could not stay on the chair much longer. Sooner or later she was going to make a mistake and it would snap her neck.

In the meantime…

Wargrave honestly wondered if Claythorne even _realised _what she had just done just then, or if she had been too desperate to survive she had spoken without thinking.

She had just admitted to murdering Cyril Hamilton by saying all she had needed to do was to give a story and give evidence, and she would be believed.

His disappointment and dismay with her only grew. He had assumed she was smarter than that, and she had the intelligence to not admit anything to the man who was hunting down everyone on the island, leaving them the only people left.

"What a beguiling woman you are, Miss Claythorne," Wargrave didn't raise his voice above a whisper. "_Vera_. Quite my favourite, really."

Claythorne seemed to think he was going along with his plan because she smiled. "There's no final bullet, Judge, but I can save us both," she said, as he stood up and walked slowly over to her, her eyes tracking every movement as she went on, "I'll keep your secret and I will save us both, just let me down. Please."

Wargrave spared her a pitying look before he bent down…and yanked the chair away and stood it upright far from where Vera was left choking as the noose tightened around her neck while he walked back to the door after picking up the figures. He no longer had any business here, though he paused as he opened the door and looked back at Vera.

He pulled the bullet out of his gun that he had made sure to take from Lombard's gun and showed it to the choking woman, holding it until he was sure she had noticed.

"You forgot the one that shot me," he chided her for her careless mistake before he walked out of the room and left her choking.

A few moments later there was silence.

He was now truly the last man on the island.

* * *

Once he was inside the dining room, Wargrave had to set the scene. He looked around the room in pride over what he had done so quickly. The mess made the night before by the last few people to survive on the island before they had died in a matter of hours was now long gone, and as he added the figures representing Lombard and Claythorne to the collection, he looked around the room to see what he could do now.

Wargrave had been planning this moment for a long time, and he smiled as he poured two glasses of sherry and placed one at one head of the table to make it appear as if the judge and the mysterious Mr Owen had shared a drink before Owen pulled out the revolver, and put a bullet in Wargrave's brain.

After putting the glass and the decanter down, Wargrave pulled out the chair and placed it at an angle before he looked around the room to see if he could find something else to confuse the police even more, and a thin smile crossed his lips as he saw the windows. He walked over and threw a set open, letting in the cool sea breeze into the room, and for a moment Wargrave paused and closed his eyes to enjoy the last few moments of his life.

Walking to the doors with the napkin in his hand, Wargrave closed the doors - it was silly, really; no-one was on the island to witness what he was about to do, but the more mysteries he threw on the case, the better.

Wargrave sat down in his chair and he calmly stood the bullet up on the table, the golden-bronze sheen glinting in the light for a moment.

For a second Wargrave didn't move as he felt the fires of triumph burn through his insides before he slotted it into the gun he had placed on the table before he had set the scene, ready to fire.

With that chore done, Wargrave placed the revolver back on the table and picked up the glass of sherry in front of him, and he lifted it in a toast in the opposite direction where the other glass of sherry was standing on the table before he took a sip. Wargrave smacked his lips in delight as he let the drink go down his throat, the last thing he would ever eat or drink...

Wargrave picked up the gun, carefully wrapping it up with the napkin to make sure no prints found their way onto the metal. He pointed the barrel underneath his chin, tensing his arm muscles as he did with the movements he had practiced for months and months. Wargrave had planned his murders on Soldier Island to the letter, and he had also found the best way to drive suspicion away from him was to shoot himself through his brains from underneath his chin.

For a few seconds, Wargrave thought about his plans, and he took a moment to savour his triumph before he fired. In the brief moment, before the bullet finished killing him, Wargrave had just enough motor control over his muscles to throw the revolver down the table where it went skidding close to the opposite head of the table where it stopped.

Wargrave smiled in his last second, and the last verse of the poem went through his mind at this latest triumph.

And then there were None.


End file.
